Tom Oberheim Tells His Own Story Including His New Two Voice Pro Synth

At a recent event held at RSPE Audio Solutions legendary analog synthesizer, effects processor, sequencer, and drum machine designer Tom Oberheim talks about his beginning building audio equipment, the history of Oberheim Electronics, and his new Synth - the Tom Oberheim Two Voice Pro.

Tom Oberheim is an audio engineer best known for designing effects processors, analog synthesizers, sequencers, and drum machines. He has been the founder of four audio electronics companies, most notably Oberheim Electronics in 1969 and was also a key figure in the development and adoption of the MIDI standard.

From it's inception until the late 80's, Oberheim created several ground-breaking products including the DS-2 (one of the first digital music sequencers), the Synthesizer Expansion Module (SEM), along with some of the first commercially available polyphonic synthesizers; The Two-voice TVS-1, Four-voice FVS-1, and Eight-voice.(which was the four voice frame with an external 4 SEM module).

In 2009, Oberheim once again began hand-building and selling very limited quantities of synthesizers with upgraded features, but with a true analog design as faithful to the sound of his originals.

People often ask Tom: "What was the favorite one of your synthesizers from before?" And his answer is always: "The Two Voice"! So, he is bringing back the Two Voice, very similar to the original, but with the addition of a few interesting upgrades.

Oberheim Two Voice Features:

Mini-Sequencer is enhanced - you still generate a sequence with the knobs ( up to 16 positions ) but you can store sequences from the knobs into flash memory

Two sequences can be played simultaneously (or play one sequence while also playing on the keyboard, like the old one)

After sequences are stored in flash memory, you can edit them to add 2-way, 3-way or 4-way ratcheting and you can program the gate length from zero (like a rest) up to almost the complete step length

Sequences can be chained into songs, and each step in a song can be programmed for sequence number, transpose amount and number of repeats